APAC marketers gain digital confidence

SINGAPORE: Marketers in the Asia Pacific region are growing more confident in their digital abilities and most are strengthening their digital marketing content strategies, according to a new report.

The Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard is the result of a lengthy program of quantitative and qualitative surveys involving 276 senior marketers from a range of industries in Australia, Singapore, Korea, China, Hong Kong and India.

Some 28% of marketers across the region rated themselves as 'highly evolved and a leader in their field,' compared to 23% in 2012, indicating their growing assurance. India led the way, with 42% of marketers there expressing such confidence in their abilities, followed by Australia (37%) and Singapore (29%).

And there were some noteworthy shifts in priorities, as almost 75% said they were beefing up their digital marketing content strategy this year, compared to 36% in 2012.

Other areas for prioritisation included social media optimisation (59%) increasing the performance of search and online display advertising (45%), and websites (36%).

Most were already measuring and testing digital campaigns (69%), but the research showed many lacked in-house or agency analytic skills to do much more than review standard metrics such as click-through rates and conversions.

Singapore, for example, scored low on performance indicators such as customer lifetime value, churn rate and market share improvements. Hisamichi Kinomoto, Vice President of Marketing, Adobe Japan and Asia Pacific, said marketers there were "failing to tap into the business-driving metrics that will help convince senior management to increase investment".

Kinomoto also noted that survey results for the past two showed very low levels of satisfaction with digital agencies, with most marketers (69%) thinking they delivered mixed results, while 19% said results were poor.

"In our view," said Kinomoto, "there is a clear opportunity for savvy APAC agencies to get ahead of the curve and invest in technologies and skills to provide deeper, richer performance metrics to clients who are unable to do it themselves."